Random Japan

You’ve got tail: Write any message with an alphabet of cat tails!
Oona McGee
There’s something about cats. Whether they’re leaping through the air in cute GIF form or popping up in edible delights, the feline species have got us well and truly eating out of the palm of their spongy little paws. In Japan, one cat lover has paid homage to their cute ways with an alphabet made up entirely of cat tails! Now you can mesmerize your friends from A to Z with messages cute enough to print out and paste on your wall.

Created by Twitter user @Honki_Honki , this alphabet is so cute it’s got people using the word nyan (the Japanese word for meow) at the end of their sentences. The popular consensus is that these little letters are “too cute nyan” but “a little difficult to read nyan”. To test out your cat-tail-readability level, try reading the word below:

STATS
1,155
Number of people who lined up last month at a courthouse in Tokyo to attend the opening day of the trial of former Aum Shinrikyo member Makoto Hirata

56
Seats at the courthouse open to spectators

28
Percent of children in Tohoku who suffer psychological problems related to the March 11 disaster, according to the health ministry

GOING OLD SCHOOL
Officials in Saitama have announced plans to open an international bonsai academy to take advantage of the “growing popularity” of the miniature trees around the world. No, really.

Researchers in Nara are hoping that the discovery of 11 grains of brown rice dating to the Yayoi period (300 BC to 300 AD) will offer insight into the cultivation methods of the time.

Among the 28 Meiji-era industrial sites that the government is promoting for UNESCO World Heritage status are shipyards, coal mines and “smelting facilities.”

To mark the centenary of the death of Empress Shoken (1850-1914)—wife of the Emperor Meiji—the Imperial Household Agency will publish

NHK Asks For Interview

I'm Sorry We're Washing Our Hair

Finding Love

At The Hotel

Scout Corps

Wants You

Father continues searching for missing daughter, 3 years after quake


Norio Kimura, 48, remembers a day during the summer of 2010 when he and his daughter Yuna, who had just started school, were part of a group pulling a fishing net to land in a ceremony for the start of the fishing season. They caught a lot of surf clams and rays. That night, Kimura and the rest of his family sat at their dinner table and enjoyed their catch. But Kimura can never experience that happiness again.

The tsunami that followed the Great East Japan Earthquake took away Yuna, as well as Kimura's wife Miyuki and his father Wataro. Police halted their search for disaster victims for over a month after an evacuation order was given for Kimura's town of Okuma following the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster. The bodies of Miyuki and Wataro were later recovered, but Yuna remains unaccounted for.